I'm looking to increase my HDD space and getting a 500GB drive. I will be using the drive for media only (95% being divx video) and intend on using a Netgear media receiver to stream it to my pc. My question is, how much slower is an external drive compared to an internal SATA drive and would I notice the difference playing videos only? I don't really need the mobility of an external drive, but if the performance isn't much different then I would pay the extra. My last question is about the interface for the external HDD. Which would be quicker, I have an eSATA on my desktop or would I be better with a USB 2.0??

Any advice Briskodians???

eSATA should be quicker than USB2. But we use USB2 as external storage, fast enough and much cheaper than a RAID5 (nowhere near as reliable though).

For playback of videos it should be absolutely fine

I just got myself a nice 500gb External. Freecom USB 2.0.

Freecom Hard Drive 500GB External USB2 : fre-28604

The Freecom drives seem fine.. and for streaming divx video USB2 is more than fast enough.

SVP do the 500Gb Freecom for

500gb how much porn have you got :eek: (wanna do some swaps:rofl: :P )

Not sure if it's any use to you but I just spotted this one on HUKD -

Amazon.co.uk: LaCie, Desktop Drive , Design by F.A Porsche, 500GB, 7200RPM, USB2, Mac and PC, Plug and Play: Electronics & Photo: LACIE GMBH

LaCie Desktop Drive Design by F.A Porsche, 500GB, 7200RPM, USB2, Mac and PC, Plug and Play is now

Regards filling up the drive :P - no problem (at the office), we use virtual server and those disc images can get pretty large. For our latest release we're talking 16GB per image, I personally deal with about 10 customers and that always goes up not down, and that's just the image. Then dbase dumps etc and it fills up pretty sharpish

Personally i would go with an internal drive,either sata or pata there is no real speed difference between the the two,either the Samsung spinpoint 16 mb cache or the Seagate Barracuda both are available at really good prices at the moment and the Seagate is available in 750gb size

Just my two pennies:)

seagate - 5 year warranty

worth thinking about

Yes, very well tested drives are the seagates and the WD's and now the newer Maxtors

PATA don't bother as they are getting expensive for the bigger capacities.

If you go internal go STAT as there is a massive difference from PATA in terms of speed.

External go get a FireWire card and get a FireWire drive. USB2 is pathetic in comparison. USB was invented to replace serial comms where as FireWire was invented for shifting masses of data as quickly as possible but for some reason PC makes never really put them into new machines

Remember the X-Box 360's HD DVD drive is external so it cant be all that slow at streaming video.

Is that USB though goochie?

Is that USB though goochie?

Yes.

Its the mini-usb labeled "I/O" The other two act as a USB hub.

If you go internal go STAT as there is a massive difference from PATA in terms of speed.

External go get a FireWire card and get a FireWire drive. USB2 is pathetic in comparison. USB was invented to replace serial comms where as FireWire was invented for shifting masses of data as quickly as possible but for some reason PC makes never really put them into new machines

Firewire is only 400Mbps unless you have FW 800, USB2 is 480Mbps the speed is no tthe issue it is the increased CPU utilisation when doing USB2 transfers of some types.

As for SATA being much faster, i don't know where you get that from. Just because the interface is 3Gbits per second, and the other is 133Mbytes per second, most of the drives are the same units with a different interface board on them.

How many hard disks do you know that can stream 133Mbytes per second for more than a few milliseconds while they expunge their cache?

USB2 is 480Mbps burst rate FW is 400Mbps sustained data rate thats why they are so different

As for SATA against ATA i though it was 133 Mbits per second so i didnt know what

so we will call that 1-1 ok lol

USB2 is 480Mbps burst rate FW is 400Mbps sustained data rate thats why they are so different

As for SATA against ATA i though it was 133 Mbits per second so i didnt know what

so we will call that 1-1 ok lol

They 400 and 480mbit are both maximum rates, it is just that firewire has hardware that means sustaining it is easier. to sustain 480Mbps on USB2 you need to use a lot of CPU.

So yes fw is potentially quicker, however not many PC's have FW either.

Both have advantages, but then an e-sata drive is a good idea too.

I'll still let it go as 1-1 though :P

Good man

Regardless of the format you get, streaming will never be an issue. The bitrates of even extremely high quality high definition content is still waaaaay lower than USB2 or firewire - the xbox 360 hd-dvd addon drive is a perfect example

However, you'll definately notice it if you're coping material to / from it as that won't be a realtime access, but as fast as it will go.

It's not disimilar to fast ethernet versus gigabit ethernet. You don't need gigabit for any kind of streaming. However, if you're copying gigabytes where you're not limiting your bandwidth requirement to realtime streaming, then it does make a difference

.....You don't need gigabit for any kind of streaming. However, if you're copying gigabytes where you're not limiting your bandwidth requirement to realtime streaming, then it does make a difference

Being a pedantic git, but you can easily out stream a 1Gbit link and even a 4Gbit infiniband link can be maxed out by streaming, it just depends on what you stream (Say RAW HD).

Realistically though, as you say, the interface doesn't make a huge difference.

wow! hold on everybody, the speeds Cheeza is mentioning are theoretic speeds.

I have a 80Gb HDD in an external USB2 case and that works fine for DivX, cheap and efficient.

BUT

noisy, extra power plug, cabling,... just looks messy. Good if you want to be able to take it to a mate or not have all your pron visible to everybody

I would go for the internal as you are guaranteed faster speeds and less noise, looks neater too.

FireWire was developed at the time Digital Video Camcorders made its appearance, to answer the necessity to move digital files quickly. But it is a licensed technology so less widespread and a bit more expensive when compared to USB. FW does deliver though, but is more for professionals and requires an extra slot sometimes expansion card.

Fluffy, go for internal as cheaper solution, if you need the mobility and are prepared to wait a little longer when transferring big files, only then go for USB2, but stick to big names. Streaming media should be fine, as long as the processing power is there.

Hope this helps

Thanks all for your advice. I ended up buying a Freecom Media Player WLAN 350 for streaming my media. I will more than likely buy an internal HDD to store the media. I can get a Seagate/WD or Maxtor 500GB HDD for around

wow! hold on everybody, the speeds Cheeza is mentioning are theoretic speeds.

I have a 80Gb HDD in an external USB2 case and that works fine for DivX, cheap and efficient.

BUT

noisy, extra power plug, cabling,... just looks messy. Good if you want to be able to take it to a mate or not have all your pron visible to everybody

I would go for the internal as you are guaranteed faster speeds and less noise, looks neater too.

I thought it was obvious i was talking about the interface speeds which are always maximums not sustained. As I said in an earlier post, how many hard disks do you know that can flood a bus or p2p link alone?

Internal isn't always quieter or in fact faster and depends on a variety of factors.

I will guarantee you I have an external disk box that will constantly out perform any internal disk you like. This is down to the hardware in the box and it's config and that is more important than the raw disks.

What I think is more important here is whether the OP wants to have it as portable, how confident they are taking the lid off a PC and what their PC has already installed.

FireWire was developed at the time Digital Video Camcorders made its appearance, to answer the necessity to move digital files quickly. But it is a licensed technology so less widespread and a bit more expensive when compared to USB. FW does deliver though, but is more for professionals and requires an extra slot sometimes expansion card.

Could say the same about FC hard disks, but these are well above the needs of any home user.

Fluffy, go for internal as cheaper solution, if you need the mobility and are prepared to wait a little longer when transferring big files, only then go for USB2, but stick to big names. Streaming media should be fine, as long as the processing power is there.

I'll agree on average internal is cheaper, as long as you are happy to do the install yourself. An option might be a box with a SATA2 to USB2 bridge chip in it, which means you can buy any HDD of your choice and put it in the box.

I personally think ESATA also makes a lot of sense.

EDIT:

A bit late then...

Seagate and Maxtor are now the same company (Seagate) but as far as i know the seagates come with the longer warrenty. On that basis, I would go after one of them.

Cheeze

You got me interested now, how do you see an external harddrive being faster than an internal, considering the external interface will probably be USB2. Surely the internal interfaces (SATA-SCSI and the likes) being slower?

Cheeze

You got me interested now, how do you see an external harddrive being faster than an internal, considering the external interface will probably be USB2. Surely the internal interfaces (SATA-SCSI and the likes) being slower?

The interface, certainly in terms of serial interfaces, is never the limiting factor for sustained performance when dealing with a single disk internally.

The comment I posted above was just a general don't stereotype external HDD boxes. I have some boxes that contain a number of disks and the array as a whole would be massively faster than the same number of disks hanging internally to the PC. This is mainly due to clever hardware, but at the same time goes to show that you should work out what you want before you make a purchase.

HTH